Tag: society

My personal politics are fairly well-known, I don’t seek to keep my allegiances too close to my chest. However, this post is about politics more generally, and what I’m thinking about as we, in the words of my wise godfather, Michael Pusey, “slide down the razor blade of life towards our inevitable end”; that end being the impending federal election.

First, I’d argue the polls, multitudinous as they are, lack meaning without discussion (which is why the media polls are provably without point; you can do the statistical and uncertainty analysis on them, and they rarely influence or shift opinion), so long as we all remain cogent and adult, and discuss policy over personality. I think there’s little hope of that happening given the execrable state of our media. Even the nation’s flagship nightly current affairs program has abrogated it’s responsibility when Leigh Sales asks incessant questions about leadership speculation rather than dissecting policy and seeking for truth.

This weeks’ machinations, those of the past, and the equally innumerable shifts of leadership on the other side of the House make little difference to me. They simply firm my view that both major parties have abandoned policy platforms and a desire to make a difference to the nation, in favor of personalities and overweening, cold-eyed ambition. A change of leader, for any party, won’t change my vote. As a policy wonk from way back, I’m interested in what parties will do and stand for, over personalities and the misleading construct most of the voting public seem to have been fooled into – that they vote for (and in any way influence) the choice of Prime Minister. Go back to 7th Grade and re-do basic Civics! (oh, we don’t have a decent Civic curriculum in this nation…)

I’ve been asked if my vote will change this week in order to seek a better outcome for my business. If we all voted in the best interests of our businesses, we’d probably largely vote Liberal in this country. However, my vote is always in context, and there are a wealth of other considerations – social policy, foreign relations, climate, environment, and the generation of what’s generally referred to as “social goods” by progressive economists like Umair Haque (I recommend you read his New Capitalist Manifesto and Betterness).

For me, these things are far more important overall than immediate policy benefit for acidlabs. I’m a firm believer in doing good work with and for people you believe in and that the benefits come.

For those critical of the functioning of the 43rd Parliament, I’m not certain you can justifiably call the current parliament dysfunctional. It’s passed more legislation than any previous parliament. Those calling it ineffective on the basis of a minority government and the need to ensure equitable legislative agendas in order to gain passage on the vote of cross-benches, aren’t paying adequate attention.

This parliament and similar ones elsewhere, such as northern Europe, where either grand coalitions or equitable agreements are necessary in order to pass legislation, are almost universally successful in prosecuting legislative agendas that achieve the best results for the majority of the populace.

If anything, this parliament has been notable for its success in getting nation-changing policies made into law. Our nation will be a better place for carbon trading, the NDIS, the NBN, education funding reform, and maintaining an economy that’s inarguably the envy of most of the Western world on a subjective basis.

What’s not worked, and will be remembered before the good things, are those issues where rightwards creep, kowtowing to big business, and poll-driven politics has been at play – our unjust, and illegal under our international obligations, treatment of asylum seekers, the continued failure of decent treatment of indigenous Australians and our failure to recognise their presence and rights in the Constitution, our failure to lead the world on delivering marriage equality despite overwhelming public support, a tax on super-profits that the government allowed the rentseekers in mining to gut so they’d almost never have to pay up, and the rampant mistreatment of women not just in politics, but still in many parts of society and economy.

The last three years have seen a very effective parliament, a highly productive economy with incredibly low debt in comparison to our global peers, and many legislative changes to improve society that we should be proud of as a nation.

We need a system that will live up to our expectations, a system that is transparent and proficient. And we have learned that change is possible: that every uncomfortable system can be replaced and is replaced by a new one, one that is more efficient, better suited to our needs, giving more opportunities.

I’m someone who works with social tools for a living. My job is defined by the level of expertise I bring to using them and the way I can use them to connect with people in communities of expertise, mostly in a business context. In a grand failure (or, is it?) of work-life balance, my social and personal life involves a good deal of social network use too.

And, as part of my participation in TEDActive next week, I’m involved in a project called TEDActiveSOC. It’s all about finding deeper meaning in the way we use and create social networks and our ever-increasing hyperconnectedness. My ongoing research and thinking has me convinced that the heart of the project needs to be about enabling the production of social, or public goods.

We all know we can use our social networks for everything from the mundane and trivial to the world-changing.

There’s real social capital to be derived for users at the personal level with these outcomes in mind and even greater good at the level of organisations and society as a whole.

I’m keen for a perspective on social, organisational, governmental and personal change as an outcome that use of these tools can amplify. There are no Twitter and Facebook revolutions. Rather there are revolutions of people, somewhat amplified through social networks.

At this point, I’m actually thinking a touch wider. What I want to see is the creation of new social networks (whatever and whenever they are) with a “do no harm” perspective built in from the ground up in the DNA of the companies (and people) who make them.

So too, I want to see the users thinking the same way. Here are the sorts of questions I’m asking myself:

How do we use our social tools to ensure that no harm comes to others now and into the future as a consequence of our actions?

How do we create thick social value through the invention and use of social tools and networks?

How do we ensure our social tools are always about people over things?

How do we create and use social tools based on principle versus strategy – aiming purpose over profit?

I think we need to look to Africa and parts of Asia.

In these places, societies are becoming more connected, but in simpler ways that benefit the people directly through outcomes such as ensuring best prices for goods at market (Kenya, I think), knowing which port will buy your catch (Sri Lanka), ensuring police are paid their full wage rather than corrupt officials skimming a cut (Afghanistan), etc. All these projects are enabled by Internet-connected tools, but not accessed by anything more complex than an old-school grey screen Nokia and text messages.

Here’s the thing, I can’t write fast enough to make all this make this all make sense, so what I’m going to do is post my raw notes from each session. Crazy, I know, but hopefully it gives you at least a feel for what’s going on. When I get time, I’ll go through and add more links and detail.